The decline in sales of tablets is a hard pill to swallow

In 2010 Apple released its first iPad, and other phone makers followed suit with the production of tablets, leading to a global tablet boom. Hell, I saw people switch to using smaller tablets (phablets) as their primary cellphone. It really looked like this:

Statista has now shared that tablets are becoming less popular around the world. Q3 2018 marked the 16th consecutive quarter of declining tablet shipments, during which shipments dropped by 35% from 55.7 million in Q3 2014 to 36.4 million units in Q3 2018.

IDC has shared data on tablet sales from the big global tech companies:

Company

3Q18 Unit Shipments

3Q18 Market Share

3Q17 Unit Shipments

3Q17 Market Share

Year-Over-Year Growth

1. Apple

9.7

26.6%

10.3

25.9%

-6.1%

2. Samsung

5.3

14.6%

6.0

15.0%

-11.4%

3. Amazon.com

4.4

12.0%

4.4

11.0%

-0.4%

4. Huawei

3.2

8.9%

3.0

7.6%

7.1%

5. Lenovo*

2.3

6.3%

3.1

7.7%

-24.5%

Others

11.5

31.6%

13.1

32.9%

-12.1%

Total

36.4

100.0%

39.9

100.0%

-8.6%

Lenovo (excluding Fujitsu volume in 3Q17)**

2.3

6.3%

3.0

7.4%

-22.1%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PCD Tracker, November 2, 2018

The IDC has also shown the unit market share of tablets by brand between Q3 2017 and Q3 2018:

Is the next wave smaller, or long but thin (think Samsung Galaxy S9+)? Let’s see how the year ends…